Lauren Conrad on books, portion control, and editing

I love people’s inexplicable celebrity follows. They’re not crushes, they may not even be people you like, but you follow them without realizing you’re doing it, spit out their resume without thinking every time someone idly wonders “whatever happened to”, and it inevitably proves to be embarrassing…

As evidenced by the fact that I need to scream for a minute about Lauren Conrad.

I know. Why She exemplifies “five minutes ago”. Yet she’s still here, publishing novels and everything else under the sun on her gigantic, eponymous lifestyle (I guess) website. If you cared about Lauren or the phenomenon that was The Hills – and I kind of did, for a minute - you’ll remember that there were stories about her in legit news magazines talking about how savvy she and her father had been in parlaying her “fame” into an actual career, how deftly it had been managed to curate her brand and make sure she wasn’t just a flash in the pan.

It appears that has gone by the wayside.

When the awful video of Lauren cutting up books (see below) surfaced last week, what struck me wasn’t that she blithely destroyed books for the purpose of looking like she owned books - at least not after the initial shock. After all, she looked like a spacey waitress anyway, just trying to get through her shift. I doubt she was thinking about the cultural implications of what it would look like, though she’s taken the video down. Instead, I wondered what the hell a 26-year-old is doing making crafts professionally. In front of a fabric wall. Not only does it seem out of touch age-wise but desperately out of touch for Lauren, who was, in theory, working toward a career in mainstream-to-high fashion, with Kohl’s as a stepping stone. This seems terribly, desperately off-brand for the sophisticated urbanite she was playing up until just a couple of years ago. Why is she a Stepford wife?

Then there was this gem I saw on Twitter. Since Lauren’s alleged brand is so giant, she can comment on any-and-everything. Naturally, because we’re girls, there are many diet tips and tricks about portion size. Need a visual to tell you what to eat? Lauren can help, girlfriend! Here’s her guide to portion sizes - and everything looks like just like makeup! See image attached and/or click here for her “tips”. No, seriously. The way to remember how much protein you should eat is to imagine six eyeshadow palettes (!!!), not to be confused with a single eyeshadow that is your guideline for cheese. You dummy.

Okay, fine. So she likes hair and makeup. At least she’s doing stuff, right? Try this: in a long post, Lauren discusses the process of writing and editing her books. Because she is a published author several times over. I’ll wait while you weep. Anyway, the post discusses the long, meticulous process of writing and then editing, making sure every change is correct and it’s exactly how you want it. You can read it here and then, be sure to note the bottom of the page, where the title of her new book is spelled wrong. In a post about editing! Someone please acknowledge this?

Look. I thought the girl was smarter than this, to be honest. Not that she had an actual critical brain but that she would at least keep a closer eye on her packaging. The stuff Lauren Conrad is doing now? Sweet, inoffensive crafts and things to make your life pretty? It’s a far f*cking cry from Martha Stewart. Not to make too grandiose a point, but this kind of thing is why old white male politicians think they can make important decisions for all the silly little ladies in the world. This is who they think they’re dealing with.

You think I’m being too harsh? I worried too. Not everyone should get a Nobel Prize and that’s not what I’m suggesting. But I care because she remains a role model, I suspect, for younger girls. Nice girl, well groomed, tasteful dresses – it all looks good – but I can’t endorse that she’s endorsing this level of stupidity. Unlike her costars, she sidestepped the “reality-show ho” stereotype but putting out a product that’s criminally stupid isn’t any better.